Boy, I thought it was cold yesterday but today is even
worse.The difference - winds gusting
to 25 knots.It’s not only made things
colder but the blowing snow has kept us in camp.Visibility is so poor, we can sometimes barely see from one side
of the camp to another in the blowing snow.

So, as long as we’re stuck in the camp, I may as well talk
about something I’ve wanted to for a while now - the camp itself.All of the buildings are constructed of
sections of plywood 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide.That means all of the buildings’ dimensions are in increments of
4 feet.The largest building - the
Command Hut - is 20 ft by 20 ft.All of
the living hootches are 8 ft by 20 ft.

All of the buildings have names.Before we arrived, the guys from APL/UW stenciled each with the
name of a Las Vegas hotel - “Circus Circus” (where I live), “The Sands”, “Luxor”,
etc.The Command Hut is called “MGM
Grand”, possibly a nod to the studio that produces Stargate.And the Mess Hall - the centerpiece of the
camp - “Bellagio”.

The “Venetian” with ”New York, New
York” in the Background

Each living hootch has up to six residents in three double
bunk beds and is warmed by an oil-fired heater.One trick of living up here is to keep a stock pot on top of the
heater.Filled periodically from our
mined ice supply, the water melted in these pots provides each hut with water
for bathing and drinking.In addition,
keeping the pot at a slight boil raises the humidity in the huts from near-zero
to about 20%.Avoiding cracked skin is
important for the comfort of the residents and to avoid the potential for
infection.

All of the residents have customized their hootces to their
own tastes.Most have shelves (to keep
supplies and toiletries off the ground where they would freeze) and coat hooks
(for parkas).“New York, New York” used
to be our equipment shed but, with the recent population boom, has been taken
over by the ladies from Stargate.It’s
rumored to have carpeting, curtains, and other luxuries.I have no idea where they would have gotten
those things up here.

When we first got here, temperatures were warm enough that
many people were drilling holes in their walls to improve ventilation.All that ended today.People have been scurrying to keep the
biting wind out of their hootches.Ventilation
holes have disappeared.Minor gaps
between the plywood sections, overlooked before today, are being hunted down
and taped over.

The wind has had other effects on camp life.Over the past two weeks, normal foot traffic
has worn familiar paths between the different hootches and some of our outlying
areas like the runway.The blowing snow
has erased these and replaced them with random snow drifts - some almost knee
deep.

Just to clarify.We
refer to the fluffy white stuff covering the ground as “snow” only because
that’s a familiar term.Real snow is
frozen fresh water that’s fallen from the sky.Our “snow” is actually tiny pieces of sea ice that have been eroded by
the wind.If you were to taste it, it
would be salt.The Arctic is a desert,
receiving very little precipitation.To
complete the comparison between the Arctic and a more traditional desert, what
we call “snow” is actually the arctic sand.

Arctic Dunes

The last of the Stargate team was due to arrive late in the
day.To us non-pilots, this was not the
kind of weather we’d like to fly in.But
to an experienced bush pilot like Shawn, today was just another day in the
Arctic.To help him out, we had a
caravan of snowmobiles go out to the north end of the runway to mark its
centerline with their headlights.Shawn
eased his plane down gently for about the 50th time.On board were John Smith (Executive Producer
for Stargate), his wife Lynn, and Actor Richard Dean Anderson.

The Stargate crew is now complete.All we need is a clear day tomorrow for them to finish their
filming.Besides that, we need the
weather to clear before cabin fever sets in.